An Empty Workshop for Half a Year, and a Whole Rack of Large-Size Lasts!

At 8:40 on Thursday morning, December 3, at the southern edge of Wenzhou, Ye's Factory's iron gate stood at the end of an alley piled with coal slag.

He had slept less than three hours on the overnight train. After getting off, he found a noodle stall, and only truly woke up after a bowl of rice noodles in soup.

He only had one day. He would take the night train back, and by 8:30 Friday morning, he had to be sitting in his own chair on the sixth floor.

He had gone over everything he needed to secure during the day while on the train. He would book both production lines, pay the deposit, and lock down the delivery date before the New Year.

He had plenty of cash. This factory lacked cash and orders, so they were a perfect match. As for what else he could get, he had only counted on securing a batch of goods made to his specifications. Anything beyond that would be a bonus.

Half the paint on the iron gate had peeled away, but the lock was new.

Ye stood behind the gate, clutching a ring of keys. He smiled through the gap before opening it.

"Manager Ma."

Everyone in this factory had called him Manager Ma for three months. Not a single one of them knew his real surname.

The yard was small. Grass grew through cracks in the concrete, and dozens of empty cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall. Their corners had collapsed, and foreign lettering was printed on their sides. A dog rose from beside the wall, its ribs showing one by one. It looked at him twice, then lay back down.

The workshop stood at the eastern end of the yard, behind two sheet-metal doors. Ye spent a long time unlocking them. The lock cylinder was stiff, and the key would not turn. He breathed on it and rubbed it before finally twisting it open.

The moment the door opened, the smell hit them first: machine oil, leather, and dust.

When the lights came on, two production lines stretched from the entrance all the way to the far wall.

The machines were covered in plastic sheets, dust settled thickly over them.

Ye pulled off the sheets one by one and gathered them in his arms.

"On Sunday, I called five people back and ran everything through from beginning to end," he said as he rolled up the sheets. "The sewing machines, the upper-making machines, the sole line—we checked them one by one. Only one old sewing machine had a slipping belt. It just needs a new belt, twenty-odd yuan."

A man in his fifties was squatting by the far wall, wiping down the surface of a machine with a rag.

"Old Chen!" Ye called out. "Manager Ma from Hangzhou."

Old Chen straightened up, wiped his hands twice on his apron, then came over and nodded. He was a man of few words.

Back in August, this was the man who had counted out payment for those thousand pairs, bill by bill. By the final stack, his hands had been shaking. After he finished, he had even asked whether the money was real.

Lin Fan walked deeper into the workshop along the production line.

He had seen photographs of factories shut down for half a year, but had never entered one. Standing on this line now, it was different from what he had imagined. He had expected desolation. Instead, it was clean. There were no scraps on the floor, and the scissors, awls, and blades at every station had been put into iron boxes, all neatly arranged.

You could tell how a factory's workers had left when it shut down just by looking at their stations. In factories that had fallen apart in a panic, things would be scattered everywhere. This factory's workers had cleaned up before going home. They had cleaned up because, in their hearts, they were still waiting for work to begin again.

"Ye, if both lines run at full capacity, do you have enough people?"

"Enough." Ye tossed the sheets aside. "There are over forty skilled workers. Who doesn't want to make some money before the New Year? If I call them one by one, at least seventy or eighty percent will come back."

"How many pairs can one line produce in a day?"

"That depends on what we're making. I'll explain it in detail later."

He did not press the question and instead turned toward the western wall.

A row of iron racks stood there, stacked from the floor to above head height. Layer upon layer, they were filled with shoe lasts.

He stopped.

Shoe lasts were the molds used to make shoes. A shoe's width, length, height, and shape all depended on them. Each size required a set, and producing a set of lasts took money and time.

Every last on those racks was wooden, polished smooth and gleaming, with nail holes still visible along the edges.

He reached out, pulled one down, and weighed it in his hand.

It was a full size larger than the women's shoe lasts he had seen before.

A number was branded on the bottom, one he did not recognize.

"Ye, what sizing is this?"

"Foreign sizing." Ye came over. "Our factory made exports for over ten years. The size charts all followed the clients' orders, so they don't match domestic sizing."

"What would they convert to?"

"The smallest ones in this row convert to size thirty-eight." Ye swept his hand from left to right across the rack. "Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, all the way to forty-two. The top two rows are forty-three and forty-four, left over from men's styles."

Lin Fan put the last back without speaking.

He had thought this over on the train the previous night. Sizes thirty-nine through forty-two were not available at the five or six factories in the production area. If he wanted them made, he would have to commission new lasts. He did not know how much a set would cost, but he had planned to pay for it himself and push the schedule back by half a month.

He had left room for that half-month delay when he set out.

Now, he would not need it.

Foreigners had bigger feet than Chinese people. This factory had made exports for over ten years, and there was not a single small-size last on the racks. They were all the four sizes he needed. Other factories needed to make new molds for large sizes. This factory only needed new molds for small sizes.

He had originally come to buy production capacity. Any shut-down factory had production capacity; the western side of Wenzhou was full of them, block after block.

But no other factory had a whole rack of lasts like this.

"Manager Ma, don't let their age fool you. These old things are made from good wood, and a set can last for years." Ye thought he disliked how old they were. "If they don't suit your needs, I can ask someone to make new ones, though it'll be a little slow."

"They suit my needs."

He took two steps back, then stopped again.

"How many complete sets are there on these racks?"

"They're all complete. There are several sets for each size," Ye said. "Enough to run both lines at once."

When they reached the entrance, Ye wiped his hands on his trouser legs.

"Manager Ma, there's something I need to say upfront."

"Go ahead."

"Materials."

Ye stopped, his back to the two production lines.

"There isn't a single piece of leather in the factory right now. No fleece lining, no soles either," he said. "My factory has been shut down for half a year, and I still owe the material suppliers in town. I went to ask them last month. They were very polite, but they only said one thing: cash on delivery."

"You used to buy on credit."

"For over ten years, I've never paid cash for materials." Ye clicked his tongue. "When the factory was running, they begged to deliver materials to our door. After half a year of shutdown, they're afraid this factory will close one day, and then who would they collect the debt from?"

"The material payment has to be paid first."

"Paid first." Ye nodded. "That's my difficulty. I can call the veteran workers back, and I keep the machines maintained, but this is the one hurdle I can't clear myself."

Lin Fan had factored that hurdle in back in Hangzhou.

Paying half upfront was for exactly this.

The factory had been shut down for half a year, and its accounts were empty. The material suppliers would not sell on credit. Whoever paid for the materials first could take control of these two production lines. Other factories did not lack money for materials, but they did not lack orders either. They would not listen to him.

If he wanted a factory that would do as he said, he had to choose one that could not get over this hurdle by itself.

"Ye, we'll calculate the material costs together in a moment," he said. "First, let me tell you what I want made."

"Alright, tell me. I'll write it down."

Ye pulled out a pen, but could not find any paper, so he tore open a cigarette pack and flattened it.

"Use the same fuzzy-cuff short boots you make for export. I want to alter the folded cuff a little, and make the fleece one grade thicker than on your export batch. Leave everything else unchanged."

"That'll be easy. We've made those plenty of times." Ye tapped the cigarette-pack paper with his pen. "How should the sizes be allocated? Sizes thirty-six and thirty-seven sell fastest. Should I put a few extra pairs in each carton?"

"No thirty-six or thirty-seven."

The pen stopped.

"No thirty-eight either," Lin Fan said. "Thirty-nine through forty-two, only those four sizes. Not one pair of anything else."

Old Chen, who had been wiping the machines, set down the rag in his hand.

The smile remained on Ye's face, but he did not move.

"Thirty-nine and up?"

"Thirty-nine and up."